This invention relates to rifle muzzle brakes. More specifically, in at least one embodiment, the invention may comprise a felt-recoil and muzzle blast wave dissipator, which characteristics are complimentary and not mutually exclusive, especially employable on large caliber rifles.
Muzzle brake designs are generally known. As the power of modern shoulder fired rifles has risen, so too has it become necessary to control the felt-recoil to make them more comfortable to shoot and to reduce movement of the gun and thereby enhance quick target reacquisition for follow-on shots at the target.
Recoil is the rearward motion of the gun when the gun is fired. The physical process follows Newton's Law: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The recoil is the summed momentum exchange of two separate events that are closely spaced in time. First, the reaction (momentum exchange) to the acceleration of the fired bullet from the cartridge case, down, and finally out of the barrel. Second, the reaction (momentum exchange) of the rearward directed thrust developed at the muzzle when the hot propellant gases are ejected from the barrel's muzzle like a rocket motor's exhaust.
The recoil has these effects. The line-of-action of the recoil forces, following Newton's Law, is coincident with the barrel bore. If the rifle butt stock that is placed in the shooter's shoulder pocket is lower than the barrel's line-of-action, the offset distance creates a moment arm (torque arm), to which the recoil force is applied, developing a force couple, which tends to raise the rifle muzzle up with the pivot being the shoulder seat as the rifle recoils rearward. If the shooter holds the rifle very firmly and the upper torso is stiffened, the rifle muzzle will still rise, as the pivot now becomes the shooter's lower extremities with the force couple remaining the same, but having a longer moment arm.
Small caliber military arms have been designed, which mitigate the effect of an out-of-line butt stock by placing the butt stock in-line with the barrel. However well this design improves the controllability of recoil effects, it can never eliminate them. This is especially apparent when the shooter is prone. The rifle tends to stay on target, but the abuse suffered by the collarbone and shoulder can have irremediable outcomes as the recoil energy formerly absorbed by the shooter in the slowly rocking motion of the upper torso during standing or sitting is now absorbed more directly without the benefit of a large movement to spread the energy out over time. The amount of muzzle rise depends on the power of the caliber, the weight of the rifle, the posture of the shooter, and many other secondary factors.
The most adverse effect of recoil is loss of target acquisition during the shot and the added amount of time to reacquire the target prior to firing the next shot.
Gun designers have attempted to mitigate the above effects by attaching so-called muzzle brake devices to the barrels. The muzzle brake redirects high-pressure propellant gases ejected from the barrel's muzzle in thrust force vectors opposite to the recoil thrust vectors, namely to the rearward direction, to mitigate recoil, and/or upward, to reduce muzzle rise. Since some, or most, of the propellant gas is directed rearward in this manner, less gas is ejected forward, and so less recoil force is generated that requires counteraction. U.S. Pat. No. 5,020,416 to Tripp, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, is a good example of the prior art as well as many simple devices prevalent today. However, the prior art does not address management of very large volumes of propellant gases issued from large caliber rifles.
The recoil problem described above is acerbated with larger rifle calibers like the .50 cal. BMG (Browning Machine Gun) that employ larger and heavier bullets and very large propellant powder charges that generate an extremely large muzzle blast that is immediately and painfully perceived by the ears and even felt directly on the body by those unfortunate enough to be situated too near.
Muzzle recoil braking techniques have been applied to rifles employing large caliber cartridges with mixed results. The designer must trade off recoil amelioration with back-blast amelioration. Some recoil brakes direct the largest portion of the propellant gases rearward generating forces in opposition to the recoil forces. However, this occurs at the expense of the shooter and the spotter situated nearby at the shooter's flank, both of which experience the back-blast shockwave as a punctuated and very loud noise, which of itself, can upset target reacquisition, and additionally may kick up debris lying on the ground nearby that can obscure the target area or give away the shooter's position. The subject invention describes a utility whereby these two recoil brake effects can be mitigated in a complimentary and not contradictory way with recoil braking.
All US patents and applications and all other published documents mentioned anywhere in this application are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
Without limiting the scope of the invention a brief summary of some of the claimed embodiments of the invention is set forth below. Additional details of the summarized embodiments of the invention and/or additional embodiments of the invention may be found in the Detailed Description of the Invention below.
A brief abstract of the technical disclosure in the specification is provided as well only for the purposes of complying with 37 C.F.R. 1.72. The abstract is not intended to be used for interpreting the scope of the claims.